How fast would Santa Claus have to fly to visit every child in the world?

How fast would Santa Claus have to fly to visit every child in the world?

Father Christmas - your mission is to visit 800 million children in 200 million homes spread over 3x1013m2 of land around 
the world in only 34 hours. Good luck!


According to Arnold Pompos of Purdue University, Father Christmas would have to travel a total of 160,000,000km – further than the distance from the Earth to the Sun – to visit 800 million children in 200 million homes spread over 3x1013m2 of land around 
the world. He would have about 10 hours, from 8pm 
to 6am, to deliver the presents. Luckily, children happen to be spread across 
a wide range of time zones, buying Santa an additional 24 hours.

Even so, covering this distance in 34 hours is certainly no mean feat. Crunching the figures, we get a speed of 4,705,882km/h, far slower than the speed 
of light, but still fast enough that the air resistance is likely to vaporise Santa, along with all the children’s gifts… if he wasn’t riding a magic sleigh.

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